Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development

For undergraduate World Regional Geography courses, or for a courses on globalization or cultural diversity.

Diversity Amid Globalization explicitly acknowledges the geographic changes in today’s world by emphasizing both the homogenizing and diversifying forces inherent to the globalization process. This approach allows the authors to emphasize the interconnections that bind people and places together.  The globalization approach challenges students to make critical comparisons between the regions of the

world in order to understand them more fully. Examples of the sorts of topics used to accomplish these goals include:

• The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in SW Asia.
• Aboriginal groups using high-technology tools to forge common political survival strategies.
• The economic and political integration of the European Union, contrasted with micronationalism and the factionalism in Europe.
• Ethnic diversification in the face of strong participation in the global assembly line in SE Asia.
• The globalization and localization of beer consumption and production in the United States and Canada.

Les Rowntree teaches both Geography and Environmental Studies at San Jose State University in California, where he recently completed a term as the Chair of the interdisciplinary Department of Environmental Studies. As an environmental geographer, Dr. Rowntree's teaching and research interests focus on international environmental issues, the human dimensions of global change, biodiversity and conservation, and human-caused landscape transformation. He sees world regional geography as a way to engage and inform students by giving them the conceptual tools needed to assess global issues critically in their larger context. Recently Dr. Rowntree has done research in Morocco, Mexico, Australia, and Europe, as well as in his native California. Along with publishing in various geographic and environmental journals, Dr. Rowntree is also writing a book on the natural history of California's Bay Area and Central Coast.

Martin Lewis is a lecturer in International Affairs at Stanford University He has conducted extensive research on environmental geography in the Philippines and on the intellectual history of global geography. His publications include Wagering the Land: Ritual, Capital, and Environmental Degradation in the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, 1900-1986 (1992), and with Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997).

Marie Price is an Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at George Washington University A Latin American specialist, Marie has conducted research in Belize, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia. She has also traveled widely throughout Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her studies have explored human migration, natural resource use, environmental conservation, and regional development. Dr. Price brings to Diversity Amid Globalization a special interest in regions as dynamic spatial constructs that are shaped over time through both global and local forces. Her publications include articles in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Geographical Review, Journal of Historical Geography, CLAG Yearbook, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Focus.

William Wyckoff is a geographer in the Department of Earth Sciences at Montana State University specializing in the cultural and historical geography of North America. He has written and co-edited several books on North American settlement geography, including The Developer's Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape (1988), The Mountainous West: Explorations in Historical Geography (1995) and Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape 1860-1940 (1999). In 1990, he received the Burlington Northern Corporation's Award for Outstanding Teaching. A World Regional Geography instructor for 18 years, Dr. Wyckoff hopes that the fresh approach taken in Diversity Amid Globalization will more effectively highlight the tensions evident in the world today as global change impacts particular places and people in dramatic and often